Does anyone have any recommended settings they use for their fish finder when in the canoe. Currently I bring up my Piranhamax 175. I seem to be able to detect the depth fine but not much for fish. I shoot through the hull but from what it looks like that should be fine. I am looking at possible bringing a Hummingbird 586c I think it is this year maybe and see if that helps.

But I thought maybe had some recommended settings they use or how they set it up.

I've never used my locator to find fish. Only depth. So any setting that shows me the bottom is fine and I've never messed with settings. Sorry, no help on that.

You really need to look at you tube for your model. Example to look for hummingbird 586c settings. If your exact model is not found look at a few videos that talk about the basic settings. Most depth finders are all very similar in what they do. Some have more bells and whistles like downscan, sidescan, panoptics. You need to understand what the settings are and what they mean. Every lake is going to be different. There is no one setting set it at, it varies. If it were that easy it would come from the factory pre set. It has a lot to do with water clarity, water depth, how much detail you want, where in the water column you want to look at and many other factors. You Tube will be your teacher on this one. After viewing many many setting videos then go out with just your depth finder and play around with the settings you have learned about.

Every year I need a short refresher course to review my understanding on my unit. Then when on the water I can concentrate on fishing and not trying to remember what the buttons do.

I haven't used that model but I have never had trouble marking fish on my humminbird helix 5. I tried to shoot through the hull with an ice transducer and didn't have much luck so I invested in a RAM mount system to clamp to the gunwhale and securely hang the open water transducer over the side. It is tough to mark fish if you are super shallow (12' or less). Unless they are directly under the boat it is hard to mark fish in shallow water due to the cone angle only showing a small portion of the bottom of the lake.

Walleyes can also be tough to mark when you're moving if they are not suspended. Often, they are down in weeds/rocks and most sonars are not exact enough to mark a fish in those kinds of structure.

If you have your sonar set to a wide cone angle (>20 degrees) you may need to up your gain/sensitivity to mark individual fish. I would practice by paddling over deep water (25+) to dial your settings. Over deep water, you should be able to mark suspended baitfish or the larger fish suspended just off bottom with almost any cone angle. Also make sure you are not in ice fishing mode, as some sonars can switch back and forth between settings/cone angles.

ericinely: "I haven't used that model but I have never had trouble marking fish on my humminbird helix 5. "

Eric, thanks for LLC videos from last opener. I noticed you had the Helix 5 in the videos, after I saw that I have been thinking about trying my Helix 5 as well. With that I assume you are replacing batteries almost each day or every other day.